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Antares battle at Warlord HQ

Rowan and I went to Warlord Games HQ in Nottingham for their fortnightly Antares games night last night. They are open till 8.30pm and there are four tables available, such as this rather nicely sculpted desert. We played two games, which were against each other as we were first to set up, but all four tables were in use by the end, one for Bolt Action. Ghar seem very popular, being 3 out of the 4 armies on the other tables. In our first game I took 750 points of the store’s Algoryn army and faced off against our newly painted Ghar.

Algoryn prepare for the onslaught

I took the Algoryn, who are heavily armoured, but their base guns use mag technology which isn’t as good as the plasma weapons that Concord have. Critically their penetration is too weak to cause pins on the Ghar battlesuits, so they are reliant on the Ghar rolling a zero on a d10 when hit (not very likely). Rowan fielded 3 squads of battlesuits and a squad of outcasts with a disruptor cannon. His outcasts (being puny goblin creatures) dug in at the back in some rocks, while the Ghar trundled forward, my mag rounds pinging off their armour.

A lucky shot from my command group took down one Ghar on my right flank, but other than that I caused no casualties. In the following turn the command group was obliterated when a Ghar shot deviated from its intended target of the skimmer. The skimmer which carried my only substantial weapon spent most of its time ‘down’ and didn’t do much. The game ended on turn 6 when I lost over half my command dice and my army broke altogether. Total Ghar casualties – just one battlesuit.

Ghar close in on their luckless victims

In the next game Rowan took the Algoryn and I used Concord. This time we played a scenario in which I had to capture at least 2 out of 3 objectives on his back line. I had 4 Concord squads plus two support squads consisting of two light support drones. All had buddy drones – these are spotters which allow you to re-roll any misses, which makes them very useful but they do die immediately if your opponent rolls a 1 (low is good) when firing at your unit. I hung back and used my superior firepower to blast him. Again the Algoryn skimmer didn’t do much. It got pinned and then rolled badly to activate several times. The Algoryn right flank was weaker, so I concentrated fire there, putting just enough fire on the other flank to interfere with their firing. One Algoryn squad was destroyed and another seriously weakened. I had lost the odd trooper and quite a few buddy drones, but was winning the firefight. With time running out, one Concord squad started to rush forward but took a couple of casualties and went down near the Algoryn troops, however, with supporting fire from another undamaged squad, it got back up again and sprinted for the first objective on the far right of the Algoryn line. With one turn to go, I had to clear his command squad and advance the depleted lead squad into the middle of his deployment area. Some lucky shots blew away the two troopers and his general failed his break test, so my squad could sprint to the second objective and secure a last minute victory.